Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Dictionary Moment: Epizeuxis

Epizeuxis is a rhetorical technique in which a word is repeated emphatically or vehemently. I ran across this term in the SOED several months ago, but didn't quite know what to do with it. It has come back to me, though, in this election season. After all, who uses rhetoric more than politicians? I haven't been to any rallies where this might occur, but the multitude of campaign signs on the roadside strikes me as visual epizeuxis. Please, get out there and vote for someone who will clean up the government, so someone else can clean up the signs.

In our domestic setting, epizeuxis often involves words like "no" and "get up" and "let's go." What words do you repeat emphatically? Are you persuasive?